Posted
by
samzenpus
on Wednesday July 15, 2009 @11:15AM
from the just-put-down-the-mouse dept.

angry tapir writes "China has banned the use of shock therapy to treat Internet addiction after its use at one hospital sparked nationwide controversy. The hospital drew wide media coverage in recent months after Internet users claiming to have received the treatment wrote in blogs and forums about being tied down and subjected to shocks for 30 minutes at a time."

When electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is used in psychiatric settings here in the West, patients are completely unconscious and pumped full of muscle relaxants to keep them from jumping all over the table. Since they're unconscious, they feel no pain.. completely different from what the Chinese seem to be doing, which seeks to use electric shock as painful punishment for too much WOW.Needless to say, I didn't RTFA.

Everyone brings up that scene as if Vaikman was messing up his experiment just to flirt with the chick, but that ignores his true brilliance. Sure, he fudges the test for her -- she clearly is not psychic, she's just there as a control, so it really doesn't matter if she ever gets shocked or not. It isn't like he's testing electrocution of normal folks. But as for the guy, how is seemingly shocked for giving the right answers -- that's the whole experiment. Vaikman even says so: "I'm studying the effects of negative reinforcement on ESP ability." In other words, will you keep being psychic even if you get electrocuted for it.

You're modded funny by some people actually think that way, and not just about internet addiction, but pretty much anything deemed "undesireable" by society at large. Nails that stick out get nailed down, as they say... so be a good polite model citizen and you won't get "re-educated". This is hardly unique to china. Forced treatment exists in the US too, especially with teenagers.

babyduckhat didn't say that it was wrong to use the tool if it works, just that it was equivalent to bashing things with rocks. It shouldn't be news that bashing things with rocks works. I've bashed things with rocks as an alternative to a hammer when none was available and I needed to hammer a nail, or break things open that I might have otherwise sawed open etc. My sister once used a rock as an alternative to her car keys. It's not the ideal way to get the car door open, but it works. You just have to replace the window afterwards. Hmm, sticking to bashing things with rocks as an automotive tool, my girlfriend had a car once that had a dying start motor and bashing it with something would get it to start. Usually a length of steel pipe was used, but a rock was used a few times. So, to sum up: Ugh, rock good, but specialized instrument designed for purpose better! Ugh!